Saratoga Coal Company
1929, printed 1978
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 19.05 × 24.13 cm (7 1/2 × 9 1/2 in.) sheet: 20.32 × 25.4 cm (8 × 10 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of Brenda and Robert Edelson)
Accession Number
2015.19.4491
Art Historical Context
Ralph Steiner's *Saratoga Coal Company* (1929, printed 1978) captures the gritty essence of America's industrial heartland through a crisp gelatin silver print, a medium prized for its rich tonal range and sharp detail in early 20th-century photography Measuring about 7½ × 9½ inches, this intimate-scale image likely depicts the coal industry's machinery and labor, evoking the economic boom—and impending bust—of the late 1920s, just before the Great Depression. Steiner, a pioneering modernist photographer, championed "straight photography," emphasizing unmanipulated realism and precise focus t...